Resistance to antibiotic s spreads quickly among the bacteria , study at the University of Gothenburg in cooperation with Chalmers University of Technology.

Are becoming more bacteria become resistant to common antibiotics, and the worst is that every day become resistant to most known antibiotics.

This research has been that bacterial DNA is often generated by resistance to antibiotics is spreading rapidly among different types of bacteria and these react rapidly adapting.

The study results are published in the scientific journal Nature magazine Communications. The bacteria are shielded, they become resistant to everything, this is known as multi-resistance and is described as one of the significant future threats to public health.

Antibiotic resistance can arise in the environment and our bodies. Resistance to antibiotics can be transmitted between bacteria including those that cause human disease but unrelated bacteria enter yes.

Research

A large part of the transfer of genes between bacteria is carried out with the assistance of conjugative plasmids, some of the bacterial DNA. A single plasmid can exist and multiply within a cell and starts the whole cellular machinery. But then may be forwarded to another cell and thus spread among bacteria.

The research team studied a group of carriers of known genes for resistance to antibiotics IncP-1 plasmids. Using advanced DNA analysis. The researchers have succeeded in mapping the origin of different IncP-1 plasmids and mobility between different bacterial species.

Peter Norberg, a researcher at the Institute of Biomedicine, University of Gothenburg

Our results show that the plasmids of the IncP-1 group that existed in these bacteria are adapted to different bacteria. Even recombined which means that a single plasmid can be considered as a puzzle made up of genes, each of which has been adapted to the different species of bacteria.

This indicates the great capacity of adaptation and suggests that plasmids can move relatively freely in the medium and thus flourish in many different species of bacteria.

There was already present that plasmids are important in the spread of antibiotic resistance. The findings of the research team confirm that the IncP-1 plasmids move, and have spread to several species of bacteria and have also interacted directly with each other to increase the potential for spread of genes.